The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (23 page)

Cadorna stuck to his doctrine; nobody, he declared, not even Napoleon (his favourite precursor) could have obtained better results.
3
The keys to success were resources and sacrifice. He was convinced – not wrongly – that the Austrians were desperately stretched. (Over the winter, they called up 850,000 men, mostly aged 43–50. The oldest Italians in the line at this time were 39.) He saw himself as labouring to persuade a feckless government and a fickle nation that a long, grinding campaign was inevitable. There might be few dramatic breakthroughs, but victory was likely; for the Austrians could never match the Italians in manpower, or prevail in a
Materialschlacht
, a war of material; the Russian Front and the Allied naval blockade would see to that. On top of this, Cadorna had another reasonable grievance. He was unhappy with Sonnino’s decision to send two divisions to Albania in early December, as insurance against Allied backsliding on the promises of April 1915. Cadorna was a soldier, not an imperialist, and feared the diversion of resources.

Only one minister had the knowledge or nerve to suggest an alternative strategy. In an explosive memorandum to Salandra, the Minister of War, General Zupelli, pointed out that most of the nation’s medium and heavy artillery was not deployed on crucial sections of the Isonzo. Boldly, he proposed that Cadorna should mount a fresh offensive on the Carso in early February. It should start with a bombardment by at least 500 medium or heavy guns on a front no wider than 12 kilometres, giving Cadorna an intensity of firepower resembling that on the Western Front. Delaying the resumption of war until April or later would benefit Austria more than Italy. Zupelli made his case to the cabinet at the end of January. Sonnino, angling to get Cadorna replaced by someone more congenial, urged the establishment of a Council of War as a forum for ministers and generals. This was transparently a gambit to keep tabs on Cadorna. Fearing the general’s wrath, Salandra referred the matter to the King, the only person to whom Cadorna was accountable. What did he think? If the army repeated the extensive frontal attacks that had already failed, would they not – insinuated Salandra – be knocking their heads on a wall?

Cautious Victor Emanuel sent his aide de camp to Udine. Denouncing Sonnino’s idea, Cadorna accused the government of trying to provoke his resignation. The King was sympathetic; in his milder way, he shared his general’s contempt for Roman shenanigans and his low opinion of Salandra. Cadorna followed up with a strongly worded letter: ‘These parliamentary regimes in the Latin style are made to corrupt the country in peace and sweep it to perdition in war. And do not accuse me of anti-liberalism just because events have made me so sceptical.’ To his wife, he wrote that his principal enemies were no longer the Austrians.

The army’s dismal showing against Albanian guerrillas helped Cadorna; had he not foreseen a fiasco? Then his position was suddenly weakened, when the army lost a piece of territory north of Gorizia. Counter-attacks were beaten back by Croatian and Hungarian regiments. More than 4,000 men were lost, half as prisoners. These were worrying figures, and rumours circulated that the front-line units were going soft. In this pass, Cadorna’s staff turned to their contacts in the press. Journalists dubbed Cadorna the
generalissimo
, a title that stuck. The
Corriere della Sera
editorialised that ‘Italy has found her
Duce
’, her leader: a dramatic claim. D’Annunzio penned an ode, imploring God to aid the ‘
Duce
’ in his mighty task.

Temper his certainty, O Lord, and
nail his certainty in our breasts.
4

The
Idea Nazionale
told its readers that Cadorna was ‘the only man Italy still believes in’. The boss was particularly pleased by the compliments in Mussolini’s newspaper: ‘Who would have believed two years ago that Signor Benito would ever sing my praises.’

With the wind in his sails, Cadorna bore down on the original troublemaker. He had picked Zupelli for the job in October 1914, when he needed a trusted aide in preparing the army for war. Now he had been stabbed in the back. (There was no such thing as constructive criticism; the commission of inquiry after Caporetto found that Cadorna displayed ‘intolerance of every judgement and assessment … even from persons who had the right and duty to discuss his decisions’.) At the end of February, Cadorna told Salandra that Zupelli had to go or he would resign. The Prime Minister warned Cadorna not to price himself out of work, but with the King’s backing and matters in Albania going from bad to worse, the supreme commander was unstoppable. When Salandra offered to resign, the King refused and cajoled Cadorna into backing down. Zupelli’s position was untenable, and he resigned. The new minister of war was Paolo Morrone, a biddable general proposed by Cadorna.

The ‘government in Udine’, as the Supreme Command was becoming known, had trumped the government in Rome. No more was heard of the Council of War, and Zupelli was banished to the front. He had done his job well: machine guns and hand-grenades were being produced in large numbers. Another weapon also began large-scale production. This was the
bombarda
, a primitive trench mortar or bomb-thrower that fired tail-finned shells (up to 400 millimetres calibre) in a high trajectory. The Italians finally had something to rend barbed wire, and even blow the entanglements out of the ground.

Back in the war zone, certain lessons had been learned and applied. The forward positions were thinned out, to spare as many men as possible the rigours of winter. The Third Army brought its batteries closer to the front and experimented with ways to make better use of observers. The defences were strengthened on the middle and upper Isonzo. The engineers constructed proper positions on some sectors. The defensive fall-back lines on the River Tagliamento were taken in hand. The forces around Gorizia – VI Corps, under the dynamic and alarming command of General Capello – were placed under the Third Army, linking them with the forces on the Carso.

As the call-up was extended to further conscript classes, 24 new infantry regiments were formed in early 1916, together with two Bersaglieri regiments and 246 battalions of Alpini, specialised mountain troops destined for the Dolomites and the Tyrol. Italy’s 35 divisions in May 1915 would increase to 48 by the end of 1916, bringing the total number deployed on the front to one and a half million. The infantry began to be issued with heavy overboots and greatcoats; rubbed with grease, these gave better protection against the elements. Hobnailed leather boots arrived. Much was still amiss with the uniforms – woollen socks were in short supply, and the capes absorbed water – yet by April, the Third Army (at least) was for the first time better equipped than the enemy. Barracks were disinfected. Anti-cholera vaccinations were carried out. Iron helmets were distributed to the wire-cutting parties, and then to sentries as well. Over the winter, front-line tours were shortened to 15 days and organised in cycles: units should pass from the first to the second line, then back to the reserves. In practice, the time spent in the line was not standardised.

Finally, concessions were made to the attacking infantry; they could leave their heavy knapsacks behind when they went over the top. In a break with Garibaldian tradition, officers were permitted to direct attacks from behind. This reform was forced on the Supreme Command by the toll on the officer corps in 1915. Best of all, from the infantry’s point of view, the Supreme Command ruled that sector commanders should seek to bring their front lines within 50 metres of the enemy’s foremost positions. This distance was later reduced to 30 and then 20 metres, trying to minimise the infantry’s exposure in the death zone.

Cadorna could outmanoeuvre Italy’s government, but not her allies. On 6 December, the Allied commanders met again at Chantilly to decide on strategic priorities for the coming year. It had been a terrible year for the Entente, and Joffre and Haig wanted an overwhelming focus on the Western Front. The Italians, represented by Cadorna’s feckless deputy, General Carlo Porro, were left in no doubt that their front was a sideshow. They and the Russians pledged to launch synchronised attacks in the spring, some time after March. This timetable was made irrelevant by the German onslaught at Verdun and the Meuse, starting in late February. By early March the hard-pressed Joffre was calling for his allies to launch supporting offensives. Cadorna wanted to wait for the spring thaw before renewing the attack on Gorizia. Reluctantly, he promised a modest ‘offensive demonstration’. Publicly, he gave it a grander name: it would be a ‘vigorous offensive’ along the length of the Isonzo.

Starting on 11 March with a 48-hour bombardment, the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo concentrated on the middle reach of the river between Tolmein and Mount San Michele. This involved the usual bloodbath on the hill of Podgora, where Zeidler’s Dalmatian units resisted with their normal doggedness. A few kilometres away, the Italians gained a hundred metres of altitude on Mount Sabotino – a genuine achievement, made possible by long preparation over the winter, entrenching and sapping up the mountain’s western flanks. On San Michele, the Third Army gained ground near the hamlet of San Martino, only to lose it when the Austrians used tear-gas shells. Offensives around Tolmein and on Mount Mrzli met with no better success. Snow in the north and fog in the south forced a cessation. Yet the fighting ran on; the Austrians counter-attacked, tightening their grip on Tolmein and Rombon, while the Italian 18th Infantry Regiment captured an important position south of San Michele, between Mount Sei Busi and Monfalcone.

The Italians took another 13,000 casualties without improving their position much or helping the French in any way. A Croatian newspaper crowed that the fifth offensive had ‘ended in the same kind of success as the first four’. Cadorna took the outcome as final proof that he needed much more heavy artillery. His opposite number, Conrad von Hötzendorf, drew a different lesson: that the moment had come to turn the tables.

Source Notes
THIRTEEN
A Necessary Holocaust?

1
Amid the ‘glacial silence’, metaphors for the situation
: Favetti, 75, 78. 

2
‘
Is he not a true hero? They are all like this
’: Favetti, 114.

3
Cadorna’s losses in 1915 ran to 400,000
: Procacci [2000], 77.

4
‘
going to be massacred
’: The pro-war liberal, Giovanni Amendola, writing to Luigi Albertini of
Corriere della Sera
, 11 November 1915.

5
‘
mere garden secateurs
’: Giacomel [2003a], 65.

6
‘
a good number of avoidable deaths
’: Barbour. Diary entry for 5 November 1915.

7
made the soldiers’ souls ‘flabby’
: Franzina [1999], 69.

8
‘
Standing inert with the prospect
’: De Simone, 115–6.

9
‘
a necessary holocaust
’: Sema, vol. I, 143.

10
‘
Nobody has a clue how to lay wire
’: Col. Douhet, cited by Procacci [2000], 75.

11
‘
When told to advance
’: Barbour. Diary for 5 November 1915.

12
This slack custom endured throughout the war
: The British Official History of operations in Italy recorded that, ‘as noon approached Italian officers very obviously became uneasy and wanted to stop any work in hand.’ Gladden, 30.

13
‘
Shit of every size, shape, colour
’: Roscioni, 127.

14
‘
literally a field of filth
’: Gladden, 26.

15
two soldiers were shot
: Longo  165 ff.

16
The joke went around
: Gatti [1997], 117.

17
Another incident occurred on 20 December
: Alliney, 90–2.

18
‘
tendentious or exaggerated rumours
’: From a statement on 8 December 1915 by the Minister of War. Longo, 164.

19
Sonnino, angling to get Cadorna replaced
: Rocca, 110–11. 

20
Cadorna solicited comments on tactics
: Longo  ff.

21
‘
Who would have believed two years ago
’: Rocca, 112.